


Sometimes

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 05:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emotion recollected in tranquillity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

Disclaimers: not mine, etc. 

Notes: none Summary: emotion recollected in tranquillity 

Warnings: as sad as most things are, these days. 

**Sometimes**

by

Gloria Lancaster

Sometimes, the best thing that can happen is to have someone die. It's a dangerous world, full of dangerous people, and sometimes... 

A total helter-skelter, those last few days with him are telescoped, now certain details are etched with a dagger's point, but the moments, the touch, the certainty of him, they are fading. His eyes now are just \- blue. His hair - just hair. 

The dagger points draw blood, dreaming or awake. I don't want to talk about that.

Like his grave: not quite what he would have wanted, I'm sure. Although, come to think of it, we never talked about anything like this. Even when we talked, we never - really - talked. Perhaps we thought we didn't need it? Perhaps I thought we didn't need it. But a grave nonetheless. It was my call, as next of Next of Kin - Naomi wasn't there to ask, so it was in my faith he died; as he lived. Father David was very understanding and I don't think anyone (or my father) will mind that Sandberg shares the Ellison Family Plot. He left a prudent space for both 'son' and 'spouse' on the floor plan, so I might as well use it. 

Next of kin. A meaningless phrase, don't you think? We found her, all the same. She was travelling but the World Service Radio have an emergency message bulletin thing - would Ms Naomi Sandburg currently travelling in Europe please contact the nearest American authorities regarding her son Blair... formalities, flights to be met at the airport, Naomi's grief and anger... I never looked at her without thinking of - no. It's cruel. Can I? Holy Mary, mother of God, forgive me, she wore her grief and anger with such dignity I doubted it was real. Gallatea, the statue woman who came to life. There are times, perhaps, when great beauty is simply alienation. I'm sure she cried, she just never looked as if she did. 

I visited him, his grave, rather, but not with any sinister intent. Simon told me he had taken the bullets from my gun but that was just silly so he put them back and waited. I didn't use them - well, I did, but only for their proper purpose. The grave was simply tended and suited him, I thought, the eternal traveller safe home at last, on a low sloping hill surrounded by a tribe of aliens he'd take great delight in studying through all eternity. My sympathies are entirely with the aliens. 

Dying as he did, so young and so - well, that way, I like to think he was spared, taken from pain to come. St Patrick takes the finest angels back to himself, they say. That's a good thing about it all, about Father David too, all the superstitious tribal nonsense comes as a great comfort to a man, and I can't deny it. I told Father David about him, the familiar ritual from the first seven years of my life coming back to me now as if I'd never been away, forgive me father for I have sinned it has been many years since my last confession.... maybe only Blair would understand why. Maybe only Blair would be interested: Sentinel ontological responses to religious indoctrination in childhood. 

Maybe. Maybe. I only know I don't believe in prayer and yet I pray for him, for his soul to rest easy, for perpetual light to shine upon... 

And now the truth, something I knew but never knew, something that makes his death as bearable as it can be. For if he hadn't died, I would never have known this truth. Day after day, him being there; it was just the way of things, as simple and unquestioned as the sunrise. Who questions this? Only as we lose things do we care, only as we lose them do we cherish them dearer and closer. Only now he is dead can I admit the truth: aw, God, but I loved that boy. 

End


End file.
